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Baltimore Sun
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Aug 19, 08 7:50 AM CDT
(Newser) -
The FBI revealed unprecedented details about its investigation of army scientist Bruce Ivins yesterday in a move to counter skepticism in the scientific community. The agency laid out how it brought together top scientists from the public and private sector to trace samples of the deadly anthrax of 2001 to Ivins, who killed himself before being indicted, the Baltimore Sun reports. Ivins' attorney again disputed the government account.
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Los Angeles Times
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Aug 15, 08 9:29 AM CDT
(Newser) -
The FBI's obsessive focus on the wrong anthrax suspect caused the agency to miss some important clues pointing to Bruce Ivins, the Los Angeles Times reports. Records of key-card swipes show that Ivins, who killed himself last month before being charged, spent hours in a "hot suite" with access to anthrax late at night before the 2001 anthrax mailing.
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Newsweek
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Aug 10, 08 5:54 PM CDT
(Newser) -
The FBI's case against alleged anthrax killer Bruce Ivins is full of gaps and contradictions, Newsweek reports. Ivins is said to have sent anthrax to NBC's Tom Brokaw—but was retaliating against a reporter at ABC. He also passed a polygraph in the probe and had no anthrax in his cars, clothing, or home. "I'd say the vast majority" of his ex-colleagues "think he had nothing to do with it," a former supervisor said.
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Washington Post
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Aug 8, 08 9:45 AM CDT
(Newser) -
The case of anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins has raised fears about security protecting Americans from the world's deadliest germs, the Washington Post reports. The scientist thought to be behind the deadly 2001 attacks had serious mental health problems and expressed homicidal thoughts to his frightened therapist—but his supervisors at an Army lab were never informed. Lawmakers are demanding security be tightened.
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New York Times
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Aug 7, 08 2:25 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Dozens of emails released by the FBI reveal that scientist Bruce Ivins was losing his grip on reality long before the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, the New York Times reports. The Army scientist and anthrax suspect, who committed suicide last month, wrote to a colleague in 2000 that he was having "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts" and was being "eaten alive inside."
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Associated Press
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Aug 6, 08 2:17 PM CDT
(AP) -
Army scientist Bruce Ivins is the sole person responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks, and he had custody of highly purified anthrax spores with "certain genetic mutations identical" to the poison that killed five people, the Justice Department says. Ivins was unable to give investigators "an adequate explanation for his late laboratory work hours around the time of" the attacks, and he apparently sought to mislead investigators, according to an affidavit.
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Associated Press
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Aug 6, 08 12:43 PM CDT
(Newser) -
The FBI began releasing details of its investigation into the 2001 anthrax mail attacks to families of the victims today, the AP reports, with information to be made public within hours on judge’s orders. The agency is ready to end its probe, with sources telling the Wall Street Journal spores found on a laboratory flask link the fatal attacks to Bruce Ivins, the researcher who committed suicide last week.
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Washington Post
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Aug 6, 08 10:34 AM CDT
(Newser) -
As FBI agents closed in on Bruce Ivins last fall, the anthrax suspect’s life was falling apart, the Washington Post reports. Ivins would sometimes drink a liter of vodka while downing sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs. He “was emailing me late at night with gobbledygook, ranting and raving,” a fellow scientist said. Ivins went to rehab twice before his death, as the scientist tried to help him through a 12-step recovery program.
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Washington Post
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Aug 5, 08 10:11 AM CDT
(Newser) -
The government’s lead suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, Bruce Ivins, borrowed a device from his Army bioweapons lab designed to turn germ cultures into dry powder, the Washington Post reports. The machine, known as a lyopholizer, was not commonly borrowed, and had to have been formally checked out—leaving a paper trail now being pursued by investigators.
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New York Times
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Aug 5, 08 6:23 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Pressure is mounting for the FBI to publicly explain why its 2001 anthrax investigation focused on scientist Bruce Ivins, reports the New York Times, as some question the bureau's methods. Ivins simply “looked the most susceptible to pressure,” insisted one scientist. Bureau officials say they will make details public as early as tomorrow.
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Associated Press
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Aug 4, 08 4:05 PM CDT
(AP) -
The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was fixated on a sorority that has a chapter within 100 yards of the New Jersey mailbox from which the toxin-laced letters were sent, the AP reports. Federal officials say scientist Bruce Ivins had been obsessed with Kappa Kappa Gamma since his college days at the University of Cincinnati in the 1960s, the AP reports.
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New York Times
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Aug 4, 08 6:16 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Investigators have DNA evidence that links biodefense expert Bruce Ivins to the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, but the case is largely circumstantial, the New York Times reports. Prosecutors have linked the anthrax used in mailings targeting news networks, newspapers, and Congress with a flask used by Ivins at his Maryland lab, but at least 10 people had access to the flask, a source tells the Times. Ivins is also linked to prestamped envelopes used in the attack, which were sold at a Maryland post office he frequented .
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New York Times
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Aug 3, 08 9:59 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Bruce Ivins was one of a handful of scientists with access to deadly agents of biowarfare—until the 2001 anthrax attacks in which he was suspected. In the wake of the researcher's suicide, the New York Times takes a look at the nation’s bioterror infrastructure—which has ballooned in the last 7 years—and asks whether giving more people more access to dangerous pathogens is making us safer, or placing us at grave risk.
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CNN
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Aug 3, 08 6:32 AM CDT
(Newser) -
The Maryland scientist linked to the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings who committed suicide last week had a “detailed homicidal plan” to kill his co-workers, his therapist testified. Bruce Ivins was diagnosed as a “sociopathic, homicidal killer” by several psychiatrists, she told a judge July 24, in seeking a protective order against him. Ivins obtained a gun and bullet-proof vest as soon as he learned of the pending charges against him, and planned to "go out in a blaze of glory,” she said.
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Los Angeles Times
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Aug 2, 08 8:38 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Bruce Ivins, the government scientist linked to the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings who committed suicide this week, stood to profit from a panic set off by the killings, the Los Angeles Times reports. Ivins, who was close to being charged by the FBI when he killed himself, was listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a vaccine that could have earned him tens of thousands in royalties as the government stockpiled vaccines.
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Washington Post
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Aug 1, 08 4:54 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Bruce Ivins, the government scientist who committed suicide this week as FBI investigators working the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks were closing in, was known as a quiet, introverted researcher, the Washington Post reports. One ex-colleague described him as "a well-respected scientist” although he “always seemed on the edge.”
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Associated Press
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Aug 1, 08 10:15 AM CDT
(Newser) -
If Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins hadn’t killed himself, he might have been executed. Federal prosecutors were on the verge of indicting Ivins in the 2001 anthrax mail attacks that killed five people, and they would have sought the death penalty, the AP reports. One official says an ongoing grand jury was closing in on the 62-year-old Maryland man, who spent more than a decade working on an anthrax vaccine.
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